208Still sternly shepherded by the small guide they climbed down again to make a closer acquaintance with the Oratory of Phalaris. Phalaris of the infamous legend of the brazen bull, into whose heated body were cast the enemies of the ancient Tyrant of Akragas, because that humorous gentleman’s fancy was highly diverted by the similarity of their moanings, as they slowly roasted, to the lowing of kine. It is said that he fretted a good deal because nobody else appeared to think the thing as good a joke as it seemed to him, but then taste in jests will differ, unfortunately. The Carthagenians when they came over and conquered Sicily were quite delighted with the ingenious toy, and carried it off triumphantly to Africa. They were finished artists in torture themselves, and appreciated a valuable new idea. Scipio found the bull in Carthage, when he made a final end of that city, and he returned it to Akragas, but appetite for really poignant fun appears to have died out by that time, and Fortunato, whom they consulted, seemed to think it was probably eventually broken up for the purpose of manufacturing braziers, or possibly warming-pans. Memory of the Bull almost obscured the fact that the Oratory was a beautiful Greek chapel, such as was used to hold some statue of a god, and the memorials of ancestors, and served for private daily devotions without need of a priest. The Normans had the same habit of private family chapels, so the Oratory had served them in turn, being pierced by a Norman window and the square-headed entrance door fitted with an arch. Half a dozen races and centuries had each had a hand in the Church and Convent of San Niccola too, 209apparently. It was built from stones filched from that vast ruin of the Temple of Zeus they were on their roundabout way to see, and which has always been an exhaustless quarry for Girgenti. So late as in the last century the huge stones that formed the Porto Empedocle, a long mole from which the sulphur is shipped, were stolen from poor Zeus. Doors, windows, roofs, arches, had been added or changed in San Niccola, just as each generation needed, and each in the taste of the period. The holy-water stoup at the entrance, for example, was an enormous marble hand, taken from one of the temples. For the Greeks too had fonts of holy water, consecrated by plunging into it a burning torch from the altar, and as the worshippers entered they were asperged with a branch of laurel.